Herdsmen kill 2 brothers, 5 IDP returnees, injure scores in Taraba

At least seven Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, were killed yesterday while several others were wounded when armed gunmen suspected to be Fulani herdsmen invaded Kortse village, Gassol Local Government Area of Taraba State.
The attack against returning IDPs is the third within a fortnight.
The killing of the people is also coming few days after Governor Darius Ishaku’s directive to traditional rulers to ensure the safety of the returning IDPs.
Nigerian Pilot Sunday checks have indicated that some traditional rulers in the state were alleged to have compromised security situation in their domain, a situation that led to the governor’s recent directive.
An eyewitness account has it that the returnees, who since their returned, “have been going to farm in groups for security reasons, were ambushed on their way to a rice farm near a popular fish pond in the area, 5 kilometres away from Dan-Anacha town”.
One Esther Kumashenge, who survived while two of her sons, Ushahemba Kumashenge and Sughter Kumashenge- were killed in the attack, informed that “the attackers are from the house of one Alhaji Nyako.”
The attackers, the survivor revealed sent one Goma Yakubu with another person, who came as spies and shortly after she said, they emerged from the bush and attacked them.
“On sighting them, we started running but their targets were the men among us and they shoot and cut them with cutlasses. They would have killed all of us if they had wanted because we were armless,” she said.
Kumashenge maintained that many of the injured were receiving treatment at private hospitals in Dan-Anacha and First Referral Hospital in Mutum-Biyu
Confirming the incident, Taraba State Police Public Relations Officer, Joseph Kwaji, stated that unidentified gunmen attacked six families while they were fishing in Kortse village near Dan-Anacha and killed two persons, while others escaped.
He said that the police made efforts to arrest them but could not find the attackers, and added that only two corpses were recovered and handed over to their families for burial.